USA > Vermont > Windham County > Brattleboro > Minutes and reports of the annual 125th annual meeting of the Vermont Congregational Conference and the 102nd annual meeting of the Vermont Domestic Missionary Society > Part 16
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At the June meeting, the Secretary reported an unusual in- terest as having characterized the Association meetings just past, which he felt to have been a natural outcome of the World Move- ment Campaign and of the attention given by the Conference to the filling of vacancies in the pastorates.
At this meeting it was voted to request the Conference Treasurer to send to the Receivers for the several associations as soon as practicable after July 1, 1920, and in subsequent years immediately following the State Conference, the usual statement of the amounts due from their respective associations for the per capita contribution, asking the Receivers to send their statements to the churches so soon thereafter that the per capita contribu- tions shall be received by the State Treasurer as soon as possible after October 1st of each year.
In arranging for the Middlebury Convocation it was voted that the churches be requested to pay the expenses of their min- isters in attending the Convocation.
At the Convocation meeting, Secretary Merrill reported the total expenditures in the first World Movement Campaign to have been $4,554.38.
Much of the time of the various meetings has been devoted to policies and details with regard to raising the World Move-
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ment quotas and to the various problems presented by the en- largement of the State work afforded thereby.
Suggestions for a local church program for Vermont, 1920- 21, to be sent to the pastors, was approved September 21.
A plan for week-day religious education in connection with the public schools has been considered. The matter is now with a general committee selected from the executive heads of five Protestant bodies, including our own, the chairman of the Relig- ious Education committees of the same bodies, three representa- tives of the Vermont Sunday School Association and several pub- lic school men.
In February, on account of the death of Rev. William R. Price of East Berkshire, Rev. W. C. Clark of Bakersfield was ap- pointed Reporter and Receiver for the Franklin and Grand Isle Association.
In accordance with the recommendation contained in last year's report, the Directors prepared and presented to the Gen- eral Assembly an act relating to the ownership and disposition of the property of such Congregational churches as are or may become extinct. This act follows the wording of the Baptist act of 1917 and has become law, with slight amendments, offered on behalf of two churches and accepted by us to promote good feel- ing
The Executive Committee voted to bond the State Treas- urer of Benevolences in an approved bonding company for $7,500, and to recommend to the Conference that this office be made a permanent one.
The dates for the 1921 Middlebury Convocation have been fixed for September 5-8 and arrangements therefor left to the Secretary and a committee to be appointed by him.
Congregational World Movement: 1921 Campaign
The Directors recognize that this work must be kept forever at least at the level attained in 1920. They voted, February 18, that the Secretary as Campaign Director should be assisted in the second campaign by a State Campaign Committee appointed
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· by him, who should have power to appoint a lay director. The Committee so appointed were Revs. C. C. Adams, L. A. Edwards, G. S. Mills, E. G. French and A. S. Bole. The budget for the ex- penses of this campaign was approved at $2,100 total. It was also voted that the contributions be divided as recommended by the Committee on Benevolences and Missionary Education as follows :
American Board 23%
Woman's Board 13%
Woman's Home Missionary Union
13%
Vt. Domestic Missionary Society and Congregational
Home Missionary Society 22%
Congregational Church Building Society
6%
Congregational S. S. Extension Society
11/4%
American Missionary Association
81/2%
Congregational Education Society
23/4%
Ministerial Relief
11/2%
Educational Institutions
6%
Annuity Fund (for older Congregational Ministers)
2%
Miscellaneous 1%
The six per cent for Educational Institutions is to be divided as follows: One-half to Bangor Theological Seminary, one- fourth to Piedmont College and one-fourth to Northland College.
On March 29 the Executive Committee voted to refer the question of appointing a State Commission on the increasing of ministers' salaries to the next Conference, putting in form there- for certain data secured by a questionaire authorized by a meet- ing of the Directors February 18.
The Executive Committee on March 29 recommended that Vermont's share of National Council expense money be so allot- ted as to insure the largest possible delegation from Vermont, which means that this money be divided among a few delegates and let those who can afford it pay their own expenses rather than allot about $32 toward each delegate's expenses.
The following budget for 1921 is herewith presented :
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VERMONT CONGREGATIONAL CONFERENCE
National Council Dues (6c per member)
$1,385.00
Board of Pastoral Supply (11/2c per member)
346.00
Expenses Annual Meeting
125.00
Printing Minutes
200.00
Other Printing
75.00
Expenses of Directors and Committees
150.00
Treasurer's Expenses
20.00
Salary and Expenses Statistical Secretary
110.00
Interest on borrowed money
12.00
Margin to decrease borrowing in subsequent years
120.00
$2543.00
A per capita contribution of 11 cents would yield $2,545.18 and is hereby recommended, the same as last year.
The Directors present the nomination of Rev. Charles C. Merrill, as Secretary of the Vermont Congregational Conference for the year 1921-22.
CHARLES I. BUTTON Chairman
B SECRETARY'S REPORT
Again I am writing this report during the week of the World Movement Canvass and again I shall ask your attention only to the main points of the year's work.
Filling Pastoral Vacancies
This is doubtless the most important part of your Secre- tary's duties. I sometimes think I could well give it all my time. At all events, until the number of vacancies is reduced to two or three I should like to give it all my time. My dream has been to reach a point where the vacancies were so few that when a new one occurred it would be possible to help a church
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fill it at once from a "waiting list" of desirable men. We ought to retain the Congregational plan of a church choosing its own pastor and at the same time get the advantage of the Methodist plan of having no vacancies between pastorates. In the present condition of pastoral supply the actuality has trailed a long way behind the dream and I have regretted exceedingly that some churches have had to wait for months until the right man could be found. I 'hope some progress has been made and I promise diligent effort to make greater progress during the coming year. The aim of course must be not merely to secure a man promptly but so to bring minister and church together that there shall be permanent mutual satisfaction. For the "turnover" in the pas- torate is a cause of tremendous loss in church life and the five- year pastorate should be constantly emphasized as a reasonable minimum. Our forthcoming Annual Statistics will show that thirty-three Vermont churches had new Congregational pastors on January 1, 1921 as compared with January 1, 1920 (with some subsequent corrections in each case) that is, about a fourth of all the Congregational pastors were new this year. Barring the pastors of other denominations who are serving federated or united churches, your Secretary has been consulted in all these changes but one, and in all but five instances has had a very definite part in securing the new man.
Recruiting the Ministry
The Statistics of last year stated there were forty-eight churches without pastors. The Statistics of this year give the number as forty-three. This does not mean that we needed forty-three more ministers at the date these statistics were com- piled. As a matter of fact, if we leave out churches in commu- nities already sufficiently served by other denominations and churches where only summer service or service from near-by communities is practicable, the number is reduced to eighteen. Give us eighteen more ministers and we could with reasonable adequacy man the Congregational churches of Vermont, so far as numbers are concerned ; and we could probably give each one of these ministers a "man's job" and a living salary, albeit they
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might have to go into a number of fields at the behest of a pretty deep missionary spirit.
But where are the eighteen coming from? Of course, if we should get them at once, they would have to come from other states, since transfers within the State do not help the quantita- tive side of the problem. But looking forward to a five-year or ten-year period they have got to come from Vermont. The really critical question that now confronts Vermont Congrega- tionalists is whether our church life has enough depth and vi- tality to it to produce these eighteen men. This is altogether the commanding piece of work ahead for the next twelve months and I bespeak the prayerful and vigorous participation of every minister and every layman in it. A body of churches that, when brought squarely face to face with the issue, cannot produce its own ministers is doomed to drop back to relative insignificance. Following up what the Committee on Recruiting the Ministry has done already, and as a part of what it is planning to do, the Association meetings this spring have been asked by the Board of Directors to consider as their main topic: "The Immediate Necessity of Recruiting Young Men for the Congregational Ministry." Let us expect that the discussion of this topic at these meetings will lead to decisive action.
Getting Together
At the first Middlebury Convocation (I think it was the first) hearty applause from the ministers greeted the remark that henceforth in Vermont we were going to do things together. Since then not a little water has run under the bridge and un- questionably the extent and the depth of co-operation has notably increased. It has seemed to your Secretary that to have what hand he might in developing and giving expression to this co- operation between ministers and between churches, to this feel- ing that we were members of one state-wide regiment of the "mighty army," was a chief duty and privilege. With this in view I have each year attended practically every, if not every, Association meeting ; have tried to meet all the ministers in the retreats for evangelism; have tried to conduct the World Move-
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ment Campaign not merely as a scheme to raise money or pro- mote habits of giving but as a powerful means of promoting co- operation ; have done what I could to call the attention of minis- ters and churches to certain standard plans and to a program for the whole year for the local church, which each church might take hold of more strongly because it knew that other churches were taking hold with it; have sought to make the State office and the State paper a clearing-house for the exchange of ideas and experiences; and finally, have really hoped that especially through what direction I gave to the work of the Pastors-at- Large and through my own personal contact with the ministers and churches in their own fields, something was being achieved in the way of a State esprit de corps. Human fellowship is a very sacred thing, especially if it is based on a fundamental one- ness of purpose and more especially if that purpose be the estab- lishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. We must not, if we can help it, let one minister or one church feel that they are for one moment outside the great privilege and the mighty upward pull of this fellowship.
World Movement Campaign
If any minister or layman has regretted the necessity of giv- ing attention to the raising of his church's share in the State's quota, I think I can match him in regret at what seemed to be the necessity of giving attention to raising the State's quota as a whole. At times it has frankly seemed like an intolerable extra, when there was already more than enough to do. Moreover, it might be said that it was not strictly a State job, since last year only sixteen and a half per cent and this year only twenty per cent of the entire quota was to be used in the State. And what was really the "necessity" of undertaking this task? Well, it lay in a fact and a hope; the fact being that the money was des- perately needed by the Societies, that a per capita gift of fifteen cents per week for our Congregational missionary work was simply not too much for our people, even in times of financial de- pression, that indeed if we couldn't do that much we might as well haul down our flag first as last; the hope being that once a higher standard of giving was attained it would be kept and
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with the ampler resources of our State work assured, we could devote the energy released from money raising to the securing of these more fundamental objects in the State work which, to be sure, may partly depend on money, but which alone make the raising and expenditure of money worth while. With regard to taking responsibility for the entire quota, as distinguished from the Vermont portion of it, I gather that it is useless as well as un-Christian to try to partition off one's own corner and that real progress here in Vermont will come only as we get into the thick of the great campaign the world over.
Handling the Contributions of the Churches
Another way in which I have sometimes felt I was serving tables this past year has been in giving a good deal of time to the work of the State Treasurer of Benevolences who has served without salary and whose correspondence has gone through my office. I have passed upon the question of how practically every remittance should be divided in order to fulfill the conditions un- der which the money was raised, to meet the desire of donors and to accord with the needs of the missionary work. On ac- count of the distinction (which does not hold for another year) between the World Movement funds and the regular apportion- ment, there has been considerable difficulty in making the divis- ion and it is freely acknowledged that mistakes have been made. Here again, as I look back over the year, I cannot on the whole begrudge the time thus spent because I believe that when we once get this plan to running with the desired facility it will mean not only that church treasurers are greatly convenienced but that churches will be greatly stimulated in actually raising their quotas. In other words, this plan of handling remittances for all our denominational missionary work is really a part of the whole World Movement idea of raising the standard of mission- ary giving. It is interesting to remember that 171 churches have availed themselves of the State Treasurer's office this year and not only did practically all the World Movement money pass through his hands but that of the $52,277 contributed by our churches during 1920 to the regular apportionment $34,543, or just about two-thirds was distributed by him. No pressure at
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all will of course be brought to bear upon churches to send money to the State Treasurer but it will be strange if within a short time practically every church does not send its money to the Missionary Societies through him.
Two questions which I think it would be well for the Con- ference to consider at its coming meeting and if possible to de- cide are .:
1. Which is the better month for the benevolence canvass, December or May?
2. Cannot an educational program be agreed upon which shall begin in September and continue up to the time of the can- vass so that when that time comes each church will be measure- ably ready for it?
Week-Day Religious Education
This is an "extra" that might have been avoided but it is perhaps the most interesting matter in which I have been engag- ed his year. I see no hopeful future for the religious instruction of our Protestant children unless it becomes an integral part of their other education; and this seems impossible in connection with the Sunday School or even in connection with the Pastor's Class. A tremendous deal of time has now for several decades been spent in improving the Sunday School and I can't see that much progress has been made. Is not the principle upon which Protestants have hitherto acted, of practically divorcing religious instruction from the rest of education, radically wrong and has not the time come for what is hardly less than a right-about- face?
For this reason I have served as Chairman of the Executive Committee of an Interdenominational Committee which has in- vestigated the question of how Week-Day Religious Education in co-operation with the public schools could be introduced in the State. It seemed for a time as if legislation would be at once necessary but an opinion from the Attorney General, accompan- ied by a letter from Commissioner Dempsey, led the committee to hope that the plan could be introduced in a limited number of communities during the coming school year without legislation. The Executive Committee of the Vermont Sunday School As-
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sociation has asked Secretary G. E. Robbins to devote special attention to the plan during these spring months and he has made some special investigations in other states to fit him for intelligent counsel to communities that desire to take the plan up at once. I suggest that ministers and others interested get into touch with him, and I shall also be glad to be of what ser- vice I can in forwarding the introduction of the plan throughout the State.
It has undeniably been a trying year for all of us. For me its difficulties have been immeasurably lightened by the all-too- generous treatment I have received from ministers and laymen throughout the year. It is an increasing privilege to be associa- ted with a company of people who understand what loyalty to a common cause of transcendent worth really means. I must also speak of the unstinted service which Pastors-at-Large Bole and French have rendered the State during the year and of the in- telligence, the interest and the time which the Board of Directors have freely given.
CHARLES C. MERRILL
COMMITTEE REPORTS C EVANGELISM
In Retrospect
1. The year 1920 was a banner one in the history of Con- gregational Evangelism in Vermont. The accessions to the churches numbered 1622; by letter 694, and on confession 928. Accessions for 1919 were 1257. The only year for the seven years preceding 1919 that exceeded that year was 1915 with 1261 accessions. A comparison of 1919 and 1920 shows an increase of 29% ; 24% on confession, and 34% by letter. If the merger at Brookfield is left out of the record the increase by letter is reduced to 16%.
2. Altho there was this encouraging increase 98 of the 213 enrolled churches in the state had no additions on confession of faith, and 72 or one-third of all the churches had no accessions
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of any sort. It has been fully proved in recent years that defi- nite effort in the churches produces definite results in winning people to the Church and to Christ. To cut down radically the number of churches without accessions appears to be the first concern of evangelistic work. To repeat what was said in the excellent report of last year : "Evidently the greatest problem before us is to develop, or if need be to create, in every one of our churches a vital belief in evangelism such as now possesses one-third to one-half of the churches."
3. The Evangelistic Forward this year stressed 'qualitative' evangelism. Not that it was thought that the results in num- bers in 1920 was a dangerous precedent, but since it had been made clear that results in numbers could be had, it was felt that along with results in numbers should go a new emphasis to se- cure the more to be desired results in training and character, in consecration and service. Merely to stress the matter of num- bers may lead the church to try to win those who are easiest to win, and to leave untouched and unreached people in our com- munities who, while more difficult to approach, are more needed and more valuable for the Church and the Kingdom.
The figures of additions to the churches for the five years 1916-1920 inclusive.
Enrolled churches
-¿ Number of churches with
Olno accessions at all
Number of churches with
no accessions on confes-
Number of accessions in the churches which have
Aadditions only by letter
1916
215
54
1917
215
72
96
84
1918
215
75
99
120
1919
215
83
113
84
1920
213
72
98
52
Total additions 1916 1,202; 1917 1,208; 1918 1,168; 1919 1,257; 1920 1,622.
Osion
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From this study certain facts stand out in relief. In the first place thirty-five percent of our churches during the last five years have had no additions at all. In the second place, forty- six percent have had no additions on confession. In other words, almost half of our churches are not adding to the total of our membership. In the third place, the total number of additions in this forty-six percent of our churches is but five percent of the total number of additions. That means of course that thirty-five percent of that forty-six percent furnish nothing at all toward the five percent, but even so the remaining eleven percent fur- nish but five percent. It is for this reason that your Committee recommends a more strenuous and direct approach to the prob- lem of evangelism in advising an earlier start in the autumn of instead at mid-winter, and in advising that a plan of numbering the people be set on foot. A church that has had no additions to its membership for five years ought not to feel offended be- cause it is challenged to do so next year.
Twenty-seven of our enrolled churches did not have one ad- dition on confession of faith during the last five years, or twelve and one-half percent. Fourteen percent of our churches had ad- ditions on confession in one of the five years. Eighteen percent had additions in two of the five years. Twenty percent had ad- ditions by confession in three of the five years. Sixteen had ad- ditions of those who were adding by confession every year of the five.
In Prospect
1. We recommend that the Evangelistic Forward for 1921- 22 start earlier, if possible before the beginning of winter, let us say in October, while the roads are still good. If left until the first of January the churches are not reached until the first of February. That leaves too short a time for the Lenten ingather- ing. Furthermore many of the churches are not represented at the Association Conferences. This is largely due to weather conditions. The reports from the Associations indicate that from one-fourth to one-half of the churches were not represented this year. There may be a connection between this fact and the fact that so many churches achieve no particular evangelistic results.
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2. We deem it advisable that a team composed of the State Secretary and some other outstanding man, or men, of the de- nomination, visit the Association Forwards in the 1921-22 cam- paign. If these meetings are held in the autumn as recommend- ed it may be advisable to combine Associations so as to reduce the number of conferences and to secure the enthusiasm of num- bers.
Respectfully submitted,
R. A. HAMILTON E. G. FRENCH T. A. CARLSON
Committee
D
RECRUITING THE MINISTRY
As a basis for work the Committee sent out the following questionaire, the replies from the 79 churches reported being given :
1. What plan have you in Recruiting for the Ministry?
43 churches reported some plan.
2. Have you any young men or women preparing for the ministry or missions ?
3 for the ministry ; 8 for missions.
3. Have you any who are thinking of entering the ministry or missions ?
14 for the ministry ; 12 for missions.
4. Do you care to have someone come to your church to present this matter?
26 replied yes.
5. Suggest any way in which the Committee may be of help.
A general request for literature which the pastors could use.
Speakers have been sent to Dartmouth, Middlebury and the University of Vermont. In addition the ministry has been pre- sented in a number of High Schools and Academies.
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Program for the Local Church
Your Committee suggests the following program for Re- cruiting the Ministry in the local church.
1. Prayer. God now, as always, works through praying people.
2. Definite campaign of education by sermons and litera- ture.
3. Personal work with young people of promise.
4. Enlisting the aid of an outside speaker.
5. Presentation of the matter in High School or Academy of the community.
6. Report to pastors of college towns the names of stu- dents from the church who might consider Christian service as a life's work. The whole perspective of a young person's life changes in his student days. Strong men are coming to our cen- ters of high education to discuss with students the question of life work.
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